The experience of the rigid lockdown in the dental emergency room and urgency care during COVID-19 pandemic: a transnational multicenter observational study.

OBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on our lives all over the world. Changes have occurred in daily life as well as in all medical services. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the emergency accesses in four universities' emergency services during the lockdown period from March to June 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was carried out on 44,787 patients to evaluate the emergency services of university centers. The medical data of Medical Emergency Service Data (MESD) were assessed by five independent operators considering the epidemiological findings for statistics methods. RESULTS: A lower level of emergency access was reported in March-July compared to the pre-COVID period. The epidemiological data confirmed that female pathologies were more frequent compared to male patients. A fluctuation for almost all urgent healthcare centers was detected, showing one/two peaks per year during the years 2017-2019. The COVID-19 pandemic period did not influence the variety of pathology detected. CONCLUSIONS: After the lockdown period, the emergency services slowly increased in cases. The pre-COVID period showed an overlapping of the most frequent pathologies compared to the post-COVID period: periodontitis (Bari and Tirana), dental fractures (Bari and Bucharest), odontogenic abscess (Bari, Cluj and Tirana).

Stabilized zirconia ceramics for dental applications.

The research is aiming to obtain at room temperature a new ceramic material containing partially stabilized zirconia with different oxides after sintering used for dental and other technological purposes. Our research proposes a new method based on the use of stabilized zirconia with other oxides to obtain optimized dental material with a lower cost price and / or improved properties to allow wider use of these products to an increased number of patients in dental offices. X-ray diffraction, SEM analysis. FTIR spectroscopy, UVVis and density measurements were accomplished for the three ceramic systems. The correlation between the microstructure and the spectroscopic properties of zirconium stabilized by FTIR spectroscopy, UV-Vis helps understanding the mechanisms associated with the formation of high (tetragonal and / or cubic) temperature zirconia. Along with the simple, less costly preparation method and high purity of the ceramic products our study offers a highly desirable product for technological applications.